Inot the Wild essays

Inot the Wild essays Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a compelling story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who had an unforgiving respect of nature and an immeasurable level of unintended recklessness. McCandless harshly reposed a radical change in his life by living in the wild of Alaska. After McCandless graduated from Emory University, with a degree in History and Political Science, his burning desire to compete with nature under extreme circumstances forced him to give up everything that was important to him. He left his family, gave up his dream of going to law school, abandoned his car, and gave twenty five thousand dollars to charity. McCandless changed his way of thinking and living for a soul-testing challenge that resulted in his captivating death. Shortly after Outside magazine published Krakauers article entitled Death of An Innocent in 1993, his immense personal aspirations lead him to the scrutiny of McCandlesss adventure. Krakauers deep interest about the circumstances surrounding McCandless's death and a personal bond he felt with this young man initialized Krakauers journey to discover some answers. Jon Krakauer displayed a strong skill of investigation in his novel, Into The Wild. Krakauer displays thorough details about McCandlesss life, piecing together letters and interviews with the people McCandless stumbled upon, along with the sporadic journal entry by McCandless himself. Krakauer did a tremendous job researching the history of the Stampede Trail, a trail undertaken by McCandless. He stated, The trail was blazed in the 1930s by a legendary Alaska miner named Earl Pilgrim; it led to antimony claims he'd staked on Stampede Creek, above the Clearwater Fork of the Toklat River. In 1961, a Fairbanks company, Yutan Construction, won a contract from the new State of Alaska (statehood having been granted just two years earlier) to upgrade the trail, buil ...

Definition and Examples of Interrupting Phrases

Definition and Examples of Interrupting Phrases Its a playful device favored by bloggers, diarists, and (woo hoo!) the staff writers at Entertainment Weekly. But nowget ready for itthe interrupting phrase is popping up in more formal kinds of writing as well. Unlike appositives and conventional modifiers, which rename or qualify other words in a sentence, the contemporary interrupter is a (nerd alert) metadiscursive trick. The writer pauses to address the reader directly and signal her feelings about the news shes reporting. Consider these examples from a recent issue of EW: Not only does Amanda have anxiety attacks tonight, but Ella tries to beyucksweet.Travesty: Wilhelmina has a perforated ulcer. Bigger travesty: At the hospital she has abrace yourselfroommate.Tara barely had time to register that Franklin would still be alivehooray!before Sookie had her and Alcide helping to wrap Bill in a tarp so they could move him.The press release (its real!): Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary teams up with CBS to release The Colonoscopy Song. The interrupter can be the verbal equivalent of a wink, a smirk, or a smack to the forehead. It may be a single word (usually an interjection), a lengthy clause, oryou guessed itsomething in between. You can slip one in parenthetically (like this), or use dashes to call attention to it cowabunga!like that. But this intrusive maneuver isnt limited to the pop-culture press. One sign of the convergence of journalism and blogging is the growing presence of interrupters in upscale newspapers: Cash funds offered by the Pru (named Cash Haven Trust, would you believe?) and Clerical Medical also lost money because they were exposed to mortgage debt.(Paul Farrow, Good Fund Investors Must Look Beyond the Name. The Daily Telegraph [UK], August 16, 2010)So lets beat back this unnecessary, unfair andlets not mince wordscruel attack on working Americans. Big cuts in Social Security should not be on the table.(Paul Krugman, Attacking Social Security. The New York Times, August 15, 2010)No such problemhooray!at the Tories forthcoming party conference, which promises a Pride dinner in Birmingham followed by a disco at Nightingales, Brums premier gay nightclub.(Stephen Bates, Diary. The Guardian [UK], August 11, 2010)Ironically, Odgen Jr. was the only one of the five children who got to live the life he wanted. (He was also the only one to marryhappily, go figureto a wealthy railroad widow who left him a huge fortune when she died six years after the wedding in 1910.)(Yvonne Abraham, A House Full of Tales. The Boston Globe, August 1, 2010) Along with the crafty use of fragments, contractions, and the pronouns I and you, interrupters can add a more conversational, down-home flavor to our prose. But as with any potentially distracting device (teacher is talking), lets not overwork them.